< The Latest 2025-05-30T00:17:31+0000
The Pasadena Star-News | Thu 05/29 12:56pm PST | Jim Alexander
Jim Alexander: We had a significant retirement in SoCal sports this week, albeit one that was dramatically underplayed. Carlos Vela hung ’em up this week, after a 19-year soccer career that included stints in Spain and the Premier League – and El Tri on the international level, including two World Cup tournaments under Mexico’s banner – before coming to the expansion Los Angeles Football Club in 2017.
Vela became the face of LAFC in his seven seasons, winning the MLS Most Valuable Player award in 2019 while setting a league goal-scoring record, and was the captain of teams that won the MLS Cup in 2022 and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in 2024.
It’s funny, though, how it started. Vela discussed his first impressions upon arriving in L.A. – as not only the team’s first Designated Player but its first player signing, period, seven months before it would play a match – in an interview session leading up to that 2022 MLS Cup final against Philadelphia:
“When I come here, there was nothing around the stadium, even an office,” Vela said. “When I came, I arrived in L.A. and I was like, ‘Maybe there’s nobody coming to pick me up?’ So it was something weird, but after I met the people, the owners, all the members of the club, I was like, ‘OK, this can be special. We will work to make this special.’”
And he added this, when asked how the culture of the club had led to that championship moment.
“Well, I think every single part of the club (is) important because when you are building a team, you have to project something to the players or the people you want to sign,” he said. “So if they come with something like, ‘Oh, we are a new team, but you can come if you want,’ or, ‘Let’s see what happens,’ of course you would not sign for them. But that was not the case. Every time I spoke with them (it) was like, ‘We want to create something special. We want to win. We want people (to) really commit with the team, with the club, with the culture and create something special.’
“And I say this from the first day: This club is special. I want to make the club special and I work every single day to make it so. This (MLS Cup) is a really good chance for us, for myself, to do something good for them and give something back for our fans, for the club, for families, for everybody that’s involved in this club.”
Some clubs, in all sports, spend years trying to create a culture or an attitude. Some have it, lose it and struggle to get it back. LAFC’s culture has been consistent throughout its existence, and Vela helped create and solidify it in his own way. Few other players in any sport can say that.
Mirjam Swanson: Well said, Jim. LAFC was lucky to have Vela – and to have him still, right? He’s staying on as the club’s first “ambassador,” so I’m interested to see what that entails.
Vela proved the perfect guy to build around for the reasons you mentioned – but also largely because the man could play!
He retires as just one of just 13 players in MLS history to record at least 75 goals and 50 assists and he’s the only one to do all that in six seasons.
Remember when he won the 2019 MLS MVP by breaking the MLS single-season scoring record with 34 goals – SEVEN goals more than any other player at the time?! I totally got sucked into the YouTube video MLS posted yesterday of Vela goals, which is an HOUR long, because there were just that many in his MLS stay.
Also I gotta relay an anecdote that LAFC GM John Thorrington shared in his appearance this week on the Black & Gold Insider podcast, about when he knew that Vela was the guy for LAFC: He was observing the Mexican national team ahead of LAFC’s launch, he said, just hanging, part of the “wallpaper” as he described it. And he overheard some players talking about their teammate Vela, noting how he’d settled down, become a family man and how seriously he was taking his craft – basically describing the type of character of a player that Thorrington could trust to build this thing around.
Or as he put it: “After that moment is when we really in earnest went – and I knew. Because when we were laying the foundation, how important it was to get that decision right, I had that in the back of my mind.”
I heard that and thought some of these NBA playoffs, actually.
One one hand, a guy’s personal business is separate from his business on the pitch or court. Other hand, when great athletes are singularly focused on substantial goals – like Vela, or like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, say – the results can be pretty profound.
Jim: Thought you might be referring to Tyrese Haliburton of the Pacers, considering that such a to-do was made over his dad John’s return to the arena to watch him play – in a suite, no less – after he’d been barred from attending for eight games following a dust-up with Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo earlier in the playoffs. (Moral of the story: Let your kid fight his own battles!)
Not that Tyrese has had any problem doing so in these playoffs, and especially this series against the Knicks: 38 minutes a game, 24.2 points, 7.0 rebounds, 11.0 assists in the first four games, plus the single-most memorable shot so far: A 2-pointer to send Game 1 into overtime that hit the rim, bounced about 10 feet in the air and dropped through the net. For those of us of a certain age, that brought to mind Don Nelson’s shotput that bounced similarly and dropped through the net cleanly in Game 7 against the Lakers in 1969. To this day, when I’m taking notes and one bounces like that, I refer to it as a “Nellie.”
(And by the way, folks, I was just a kid then.)
But these playoffs are showcasing the next generation, and if SGA and Haliburton – and the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson – represent the future of this league, it’s in good hands. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards was thought to be this generation’s Next Jordan, but we’re not exactly seeing it in these playoffs.
And consider the consternation among ESPN and ABC executives over what, by the end of business today, could be an Oklahoma City-Indiana matchup in the NBA Finals. The ratings numbers will be … well, what’s an adjective worse than minuscule? (I have no sympathy for the TV programmers, and we’ll get into some of why farther down in this Audible.)
Meanwhile, I wonder if the Clippers are still red-faced about the one who got away (and became an MVP).
Mirjam: Been thinking a lot about the Clippers and what it will mean for them if – when? – Gilgeous-Alexander wins the championship they still haven’t – even after they traded him, their once-prized rookie, for Paul George to team with Kawhi Leonard in what was supposed to be a championship contender for seasons to come.
For a long time, I was like: There is no blaming the Clippers for that move. You do it 10 out of 10 times. Shoot, 1,000 out of 1,000. They were getting two stars in their perceivable primes and keeping one of them from the Lakers (who won the title that year anyway) in the process.
But lately, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m no longer so convinced. Mostly, the Clippers were victims of the bad luck or misfortune or whatever it is that’s cursed them over the years. But also? They got two stars who arrived with a sense of entitlement – one that the whole organization leaned into, what with its “Streetlights over Spotlights” marketing campaign …
They arrived having arrived already, or so everyone seemed to think.
SGA, conversely, was HUNGRY. I go back and read what I wrote about him that rookie season and on occasion when he returned, and the way he was talking … woo, that nice, young man from Canada was serious.
“Mentally I tell myself every night that I’m the best player on the floor and I want everybody in the arena to know that and feel that,” he said in 2023 on “Pass the Rock,” the NBA’s app series.
“I wanna be known as one of the best players to play the game. Watching guys like Kobe growing up, I go to school and the debate is, who’s better, Kobe or LeBron? Who’s better, Kobe or Michael? I want those conversations to be about myself.”
There’s something about seriously talented, seriously driven individuals who WANT to be great, who are running toward the pressure, who want to be a face – or THE – face of the league, that’s really special. And that I’m learning organizations should do everything in their power to hold onto if they’re lucky enough to get a guy like that.
Because I think, if the Clippers – or the Sacramento Kings – had it to do again, they might reconsider those moves that sent out SGA and Haliburton. Don’t you think?
Jim: You’d like to think that organizations would learn from their mistakes, and those of others. But foresight can be hard to justify in the pursuit of success right now, especially in a league where the supposed championship window can be so small … and where, as we’ve seen firsthand with the Clippers, so many things can get in the way even when you’ve tried to plan for all possibilities.
And I can guarantee you that somewhere in this June’s draft there will be a gifted player that his organization will ultimately – or maybe even immediately – send away, either out of impatience or to facilitate a deal for someone else’s star. (Say, Giannis Antetokounmpo.)
Meanwhile … I can’t remember exactly when TV executives developed their insistence on interviewing the competitors while the games are in progress. But it has become routine – and also extremely irritating. Bad enough when NBA coaches are forced to make nice for the sideline reporter at timeouts, and one of the reasons we’ve always loved Gregg Popovich was his obvious impatience at having to deal with it. He might have to do it, but he wasn’t going to make it a comfortable experience.
But it has gotten worse and more intrusive with ESPN’s insistence on interviewing players while they are actually playing the game during their Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts. Makes me want to celebrate the idea that The Worldwide Leader in Wretched Excess is stepping away from MLB coverage … except that whoever picks up that Sunday Night contract will probably continue the ritual, or substitute something even more intrusive and uncomfortable.
So tell me, Mirjam: When’s the last time you noticed something from one of those in-game interviews that turned out to be the least bit incisive or informative? I’m still waiting.
Mirjam: Yeah, same. And I think we’re going to be waiting forrrreeeevvveerrr.
Even Ralph Lawler – a Hall of Fame TV broadcaster for decades – doesn’t like them either! He quote-tweeted a post of mine the other day with his two cents: “Furthermore, it distracts from the game that is being shown on the split screen.”
It’s distracting for fans, distracting for athletes and coaches. It’s dumb because we get nothing substantive from it except that it diminishes participants’ focus on the task at hand.
Who asked for any of that? No one!
Who’s asking for it to go away? Who isn’t?
Someone had an idea, they tried it, that’s fine. But it doesn’t work, so let’s move on.
Now, what they’re doing with the New York Mets broadcasts? Have you seen this, Jim? Truly captivating innovation, and true cinema.
John DeMarsico, the game director for SNY and apparently a huge movie buff, is borrowing from Spielberg and Coppola, mixing in Hollywood homages. It’s ranged from framing Edwin Díaz’s walk to the mound like Dorothy’s first steps from black and white into the Technicolor world of Oz to artsy split-screen face-offs between pitchers and batters, a la Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.
It’s so cool and its gaining him some much-deserved acclaim, with recent articles in the New York Times and SLATE detailing his approach – and I hope THAT catches on … though not just anyone could pull it off, of course.
But, please, more of that type of creativity and less of this trend of unnecessary and uninspiring in-game interrupting. We can wait to get our tired cliches postgame.
Jim: Interestingly, I’ve got TNT’s French Open coverage on while we’re composing this Audible, and it occurred to me: Post-match tennis interviews can be uncomfortable enough. Can you imagine the network sending someone down to do in-match interviews during a changeover? You think tennis’ guardians of tradition, especially at the four majors, would stand for that?
Nope. They have a spine. Maybe others in charge of our teams, leagues and events should follow their example.